Please be patient when waiting for responses to your posts. Often they can be answered on the same day, but during the work-week (AKA school-week) free time is less predictable. In geneneral, the HU forum discourages copy-paste of a post repeatedly. While waiting, consider reading other threads related to your question. If your question is common, then you'll find those threads on the most recent page:Tank Druid ("Get lots of life, life leach, skill-based EnhancedDamage%, helper-tank (Griz)")Tank Assasin ("Get lots of %DamageReduced, DR/MDR, life leach, ctc Amp weapon, Redemption onEquip aura, high Block%, lots of skill-based EnhancedDefence%, maybe a helper-tank (Shadow)")Tank Barb ("Get lots of life, around five shields with high resistance to each element, consider WarCry to stun trash, etc")Barbs ("Get lots of life, use a high-damage merc or one that procs curses easily").

From those threads, it looks like tanks want lots of life, and as many ways of improving their EffectiveLife as possible.

For barbs in HU, their +Life skills are Increased Stamina and Battle Orders. Since those are your only options, and they're very good options, then you should put 20 points into both of them.

Raising your EffectiveLife is more open-ended, but luckily you'll get a lot of benefits no matter what route you take. The options really just optimize you for a particular situation (just like that suggestion to keep 5 shields around where each shield is specialized for high absorbs and resitance to one element). For Norm, getting high Damage Reduction and Magic Damage Reduction from diamonds in your armor and hat is very effective and also boosts your defence (and high defence is another life amplifier, so this just keeps getting better). DR/MDR is a fairly general approach that works very well in Norm but is less effective in NM and Hell because the bosses in those difficulties are significantly stronger relative to trash (DR/MDR is best against lots of small hits, e.g. Flames on the ground and Charged Bolt). Life Leach is another general way of increasing your life, but it is also mostly useful in Norm because it is reduced in NM and Hell with many bosses being unleachable.

The attack skill you use is not very important, but most of the other threads agree that Concentrate is the most "Tankish" since it improves your defence and doesn't prohibit a shield.

After you have played your barb for a while, and you've maxed BO, IStamina, and maybe Concentrate, consider posting again with specific problems such as "Having a shield for each element isn't working" or "Using a high-offence merc isn't working for trash clearing". Those questions are pretty uncommon, so will get responses relatively quickly I think.

seeing as you're planning on using concentrate, using a shield is a nobrainer to me. you should be able to find rares near enough to your level as you go along (so long as youre not playing with a bunch of 12yr old item hoarders that take everything).outside of that, to restate what many others drilled into my head: PDR and MDR is pretty much EVERYTHING when it comes to tanking. you NEED it, otherwise, you will die.

Going to bump this tank talk up.Shields are obviously a must, but I'm wondering how much, if any, I should be investing in dex. Blocking is nice, but it takes a decent investment to get a good % going. Also: would the answer change if I'm playing hardcore?

block is seriously helpfull but you will want to get plenty of faster block rate. Consider using a weapon with a few open sockets for a blocking setup and put ko runes in it. A power craft amulet (saphire) will give healthy dexterity boost + frozen armor proc.

As an example of how gg these power crafts can be would be the 30dex + 0.3(ish) str and dex per level with 30 all res and + jav and spear skills one I rolledfor my spearzon.

If you are against something like darkness, then a damagee reduction shield is better to cope with the phys damage spells. If up against something like duriel/ancients, then you should be able to get good block and still retain some dr%

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